More Happy MBA Hiring News

Today’s good news comes from a BusinessWeek article titled “Better Days Ahead for MBA Job Seekers,” in which author Erin Zlomek assures MBAs that “evidence of a rebound is everywhere.” Bringing data from a recent GMAC study, she concludes that class of 2011 MBAs are likely to have an easier time finding a job than did their peers who graduated last year and the year before.

In terms of pay, the GMAC study suggests that there probably won’t be much of a change between starting salaries for this year’s class as opposed to last year’s.

According to the MBA Career Services Council (CSC), 65% of schools surveyed reported an increase in campus recruiting by consulting firms; 60% said that financial services recruiting was also up. JPMorgan Chase plans on recruiting at 20-25 schools, an improvement over last year’s 15.

It should be noted, however, that job openings in the area of investment banking are still somewhat hard to come by, and many students are shifting their focuses away from that field toward private equity or other areas within financial services.

The positive tech market is also helping the poor investment banking market easier to swallow. At MIT Sloan, an almost equal number of grads entered the investment banking and tech fields (15% and 19% respectively), in 2008; in 2010, that gap had widened to 11.5% to investment banking and 20% to tech fields.

In general, notes J.J. Cutler, deputy vice dean for MBA admissions at Wharton, there has been a surge in interest in nontraditional MBA fields. “We’re seeing more companies coming to campus in industries such as clean tech and new media, industries that haven’t had a history of coming to MBA schools as a place to get talent,” he says.